I have looked at online marketing and making money online for years. The problem with a lot of what’s out there is that most people are looking for some solution that is a shortcut. Whatever the latest way to get a quick buck without having to do any kind of real work is what’s hot.
There’s another way to go about it though. The alternative is to constantly produce more content. The good thing about constantly producing more content is that if you are resolute to never stopping even if you have a couple of duds here and there, your base of content will be so large that it’s not effected to large extent.
The problem here is of course that it requires an extraordinary amount of work. You can’t just half ass this as it’s the most important part of making money online. Don’t let anyone tell you different.
What if I told you…
Ladies and gentlemen, what if I told you that I had the formula for making money online and making all of your wildest dreams come true? Finally you can pay off all that debt you have and go traveling the world!
That formula is extremely simple. Focus most of your time on creating content and constantly release said content to your audience.
Forget marketing techniques, leveraging facebook and twitter, or the latest SEO techniques. All of that stuff pales in comparison to constantly creating useful content.
All you, all day, erry day
It’s important to note that when I say create content, I don’t mean that you go on odesk and hire people to write content for you. That kind of content has no feeling and no personality, and feeling and personality is something critical to successful content. How do I know this? I was on the other side of the coin as a writer of content for the most random websites ever.
No, what you have to do is go to the danger zone every day. You have to open up and share your experiences and spill blood. There’s nothing new under the sun. How many times can someone talk about the same topic before it becomes repetitive? One thing that isn’t repetitive is your specific experiences related to some topic.
Use your own experience to flavor all the content you are producing and you will stand out from the crowd. Do this enough and you’ll gain a huge following.
The Struggle is Real
The incredible thing about my formula for success is that it’s extremely simple. There’s a lot of elements to online marketing, but constantly creating new content is about 80% of the battle. People who get it will bear down and start going to work. People who don’t get it will start looking for their next “money-making machine” formula.
Constantly producing new content is a serious drain on your energy. It’s mentally taxing to not only create content from ideas you have floating around in your head, but it’s also a challenge to open yourself up to criticism.
If I said that your chances of success skyrocket if you can get over those two challenges, would that be enough for you to get past it? I thought long and hard about how much work I was doing from last year. I would produce content now and then, but after doing a time audit on myself, I found that I could do a lot more.
Just get past the reservations you have to opening up yourself to the masses of the internet. Yeah it’s scary when people all over the world get a look at you, but if you just open yourself up to this you’ll get past it real quick. That fear will always be there, but after a while you’ll develop a thicker skin.
Just remember that if you can handle the heat, you will be a damn success.
Examples of Workers
I always knew that sitting down and creating content is the way to get rolling, but I just didn’t want to admit it to myself for a while. It wasn’t until I saw a couple of examples from people who I follow that it really struck a chord with me that you have to work hard at content.
D&P
I followed Mike from Danger and Play for a few years now quietly watching his progress. In the last year, his site has really blown up. Mike did a few things different in 2014 that really seemed to bump up his influence. First, he started posting really good stuff every day. Every day he was producing content. He started a really good podcast, has a decent youtube channel, and wrote articles every day. You have to respect his work ethic. As a result his blog and online following is huge.
Darksydephil
There’s a guy on youtube named Darksydephil who I started watching back in 2009. He started his channel a year before that and was producing content every day. He specializes in “playthroughs” of video games, but what really caught my attention was his videos of him playing Street Fighter 4.
Back in 2009 I was really into Street Fighter, so it was refreshing to see someone with some gameplay of the game. At the same time I was laughing at the guy because he would flip out and cite “lag” and “bullshit” as reasons he lost a match.
Phil started to really get big in 2010 and made youtube his full-time job. He started moving away from fighting games and playing every game that came out. I started to lose interest in the guy but always kept my eye on him because of the fact that he was making money from youtube. One thing he has always done that’s impressive is he keeps a constant schedule of cranking out videos every day.
I Am Alpha M
I initially discovered Aaron Marino by searching for a video on pocket squares. I started really getting into men’s fashion in 2012 and Aaron had a lot of videos on youtube about the subject. The problem I had, was that I wasn’t exactly rolling in the dough so I needed a way to dress good for less. Aaron supplied the answers to my problems in his videos.
I then found out that Aaron had a site that released content every day. Most of his posts would be embedded with a video he did. It was a truly impressive display of content. I also really liked Aaron because in all his videos he displayed a really positive and professional demeanor despite the topic.
Every Day
You’ll notice the common themes in all my examples were that these people were producing content every day. That’s important because in the internet there’s a sea of people. To get people’s attention you have to constantly be reminding them that you exist. Eventually if you are good enough, they’ll come to expect your content every day. You’ll have them coming back without reminding them. This is the goal.
Works for Everything
I’ve recently been reading about creating ebooks on the Kindle marketplace and the guy whose book I’m reading about it says he spends about 80% of what he does on writing new books to release. He owes much of his success to cranking out more books day in and day out.
I recently went to a SEO meetup about how to get more traffic for e-commerce stores. Guess what one of the biggest suggestions was? Start a blog. By starting a blog on your e-commerce store you can create content that will rank for keywords. The trick of course is to constantly create more content and you’ll have huge traffic from google. The idea is that if a certain percentage of that traffic then buys something from your store, it’s worth the effort.
How many Twitter people do you follow who have huge followings? One trait about them that I notice is that they spend time tweeting. You’re not going to get a huge following doing nothing. It stands to reason that if you are constantly producing good tweets, you will start to gain a following.
How many blogs have you ever seen from people in comments sections of other blogs that are graveyards now? They start out strong, putter along for a bit, then nothing. They lose sight of the goal in response to nothing happening. So instead of doubling down, they ditch the idea. Who knows if all it would have taken was a critical mass that they’ll now never reach?
Infinity
There’s no limit to the amount of content you can produce. By the very nature of most online ventures being complete failures, just by consistently producing content you will rise above the masses. If you knew ahead of time that a blog with 1000 posts on it of in-depth information would be a success, would you start down that road?
There’s no numbers that I can cite to you that will determine when success hits, but I can say that a lot of successful blogs, youtube channels, and podcasts have a ton of content available. I mean a ton!
This is actually good news because if you’re willing to put the work in, you will start seeing returns. After a while the sheer amount of content on your blog will make it a more authoritative source in the eyes of google which will help you rank better. This will give your information more eyes. Not only will you start ranking better for the content that you have, but all the new content you release will rank higher as well. This has a snow ball effect that will get you more and more exposure over time.
Compounding
One way to make this process even faster is to make content in different areas and combine them. Having your content available in video, audio, and written word format allows people to digest your content in the way they like. It also allows you to gain a following on different sites and leverage all of them together.
On your blog you could be getting followers subscribing to your email list. Every time a new post comes out your list is notified. On youtube, you have people subscribe to your channel. Every time a new video comes out they are notified. On itunes, you have people subscribe to your podcast. Every time a new podcast comes out they are notified. When you combine all these into one piece of content, a lot of people get notified.
Interestingly enough, it helps your google ranking for your posts by having multiple different forms of media in it. Not only that, but you could end up ranking for a term with your post and your video at the same time giving you twice the traffic.
Combine all your content together and have your website be the central hub and you will make your growth online faster.
Conclusion
The point of this article isn’t really how to make money online, but to get an online following. Having a following online makes making money really easy, but it’s a different topic. However, I see a lot of people start out in blogging and quit after a while because they realize it’s hard work.
Understand the process and just create content every day, and you’ll have a good online following at some point.
-Tate
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